31 pages • 1 hour read
The Death of Woman Wang
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Key Figures
F’eng K’o-ts’an
F’eng K’o-ts’an was the chief editor of Local History of T’an-ch’eng, a collection of biographies, government decrees, and other historical documents. F’eng’s view of the county’s history is fairly grim. As Spence notes, he “seems to have been content to compile an authentically bleak record, not touched up with the brush of nostalgia or propriety” (xiii).
F’eng’s personal life might have influenced his views. As the holder of the highest possible degree from the Chinese imperial exam, the chin-shih, he received a position as magistrate. However, he lost his position due to mishandling finances and the post stations. He stayed in T’an-ch’eng and worked as a teacher and the editor of the Local History before returning home to the province of Fukien. After refusing to serve as an official for a rebellion, he went to the mountains, where he died from exposure (2-3).
Huang Liu-hung
Huang Liu-hung was the magistrate of T’an-ch’eng from 1670 to 1672. He participated in several of the events described in The Death of Woman Wang and eventually wrote a memoir and handbook discussing his time as magistrate. During his time ruling over T’an-ch’eng, he showed a genuine concern for the area. He “would have liked to reduce some of the pressures on the country people by increasing taxation on the townsmen” (46); prayed to the God of T’an-ch’eng City to try to prevent a locust outbreak (48-49); attempted (but failed) to take down a notoriously corrupt landlord, Liu T’ing-yüan (57-58); and raised a militia to bring the Wang family to justice (92-98). Also, he presided over the trial of Jen and his father for the murder of Wang.
Jonathan Spence
Jonathan Spence (1936-2021) was a well-known historian of China. He was a professor of history at Yale University until he retired in 2008. His books on Chinese history include The Search for Modern China, The Question of Hu, and biographies of the first emperor of China and Mao Zedong.
P’eng
P’eng was the widow of Ch’en T’ai-chen, whose husband left her a son, Lien, and some money and property (59). This inheritance led to harassment by her husband’s relatives, the Ch’ens. The bullying escalated to the point that one of the Ch’ens, Ch’en Kuo-hsiang, murdered Lien. Although Kuo-hsiang’s defense against the murder charges failed, P’eng could not get back an ox and some money that one of the Ch’ens had stolen. Further, the Ch’ens chose one of their own to be her heir since her son was deceased (76).
P’u Sung-ling
P’u Sung-ling was an “essayist, short-story writer, and dramatist” who is still well known in China (xiv). In The Death of Woman Wang, Spence frequently cites P’u’s fiction in order to elaborate the cultural and social background to the history he is describing. His work tends to both poke fun at and uphold traditional attitudes and ideals (60-62). His own life was tumultuous, influencing his writing. Growing up in a household where his wife was bullied by his sisters-in-law, “P’u Sung-ling developed some of his most savage stories” from that experience (78).
Wang
Not to be confused with the Wangs discussed in Chapter 4, Wang was a poor woman married to a laborer named Jen. For an unknown reason, she left her husband with another man (117-18). After the man abandoned her, she took refuge in a Taoist temple. The temple priest and a neighbor named Kao tried to take her back to her father’s home, but her father refused her, forcing Wang to return to her husband. After some time together, Jen strangled her to death (124-32). Because of Wang’s adultery and because Jen’s execution would mean the end of his family line, the magistrate, Huang Liu-hung, gave Jen a lighter sentence. Also, he made sure Wang received a good burial near her home to prevent her vengeful ghost from haunting the community (138-39).
Wang San
Wang San is unrelated to the titular woman Wang. He was a subcommander in a rebel army fighting against the new Manchu rulers of China. After the rebels’ defeat, he fled to T’an-ch’eng and bought a farm. He soon became notorious, “for everyone in the area knew that the Wangs were gangsters as well as landlords” (90).
After marrying the daughter of his neighbor, Chiang, Wang San received his father-in-law’s land. However, another neighboring farmer, Li Yüan, also desired the land. The conflict between the Lis and the Chiangs escalated to the point that Li Yüan and most of his sons were killed in a nighttime attack on the Li household (89-92). The magistrate Huang Liu-hang had to raise a militia to bring in the Wangs. Wang San died from an arrow wound that he received during the siege on the Wang farm, but he remained a figure of local notoriety: “Though his death from his wounds showed that he was not a heavenly spirit as some had believed, nevertheless people could not forget the extent of his operations, the size of his gang, or that final act of astonishing bravado” (97).
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